A Scoutmaster's Blog

I am sure you have already had the conversation in your troop. How can we be more “green” and eco-friendly? The Boy Scouts have been discussing this long before it became socially fashionable. Take a look at Leave No Trace, for example. Or the points of the Outdoor Code.

I recently received and email featuring a story about the generational differences of being green. I am sure this has been circulating about the internet for awhile already, but it was the first time I had seen it. I enjoyed reading it so I thought I would share it with you. I may even use this as a scoutmaster minute at the end of a troop meeting.

(Unfortunately, I do not know the author of this story.)

The Green Thing

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks
were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

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Ever since I was a child I have enjoyed puppets. One year for Christmas my parents gave me a Howdy Doody ventriloquist doll. I was a big fan of the Muppet Show. I enjoy watching Jeff Dunham and his pals.

During the last few years I have made several videos featuring a puppet call Buttons, the radical Boy Scout. Buttons has talked about the Scout Oath, the Scout Law, and being physically fit. He also loves a good joke or two. While there are over a dozen videos featuring Buttons, he is not the first puppet to star in a video of mine.

In the late 1980′s, I was taping courts of honor and troop activities for Mel-TV, our local cable access television station. Some of the Boy Scouts would act in a few of the original short films I created. One of those movies was The Puppets Must Die, which involved puppets coming to life to kill people. It was like a Twilight Zone episode. Two Boy Scouts played the main roles in the film. The climax was to be a battle between the good puppet and the evil puppet.

Unfortunately, we were only able to film the first half of the movie before we ran out of time and life got in the way. Only one puppet’s scenes were filmed. A third Boy Scout acted as our puppeteer. I thought he did an excellent job of bringing Gruber to life. Some of tricks we learned while filming The Puppets Must Die were later used during the videos featuring Buttons twenty years later.

I recently posted The Puppets Must Die to our troop’s website. If you would like to view our first experiment in puppet entertainment check out http://www.melrosetroop68.org/videopuppets.html .

Sorry, but there are no plans to finish this film.

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I have finally completed a major part of a goal I have which is to scan all the Scouting pictures I have taken over the years. On Friday, I finally scanned the last of the pictures from the 1980′s. That is over 2050 photographs that use over 1.5 GB on the hard drive. I have already backed them up onto two other hard drives, and plan to copy them all to a data-dvd. I also plan to post many of them to my Flickr account as another way to back them up, and to allow other Scouts and leaders to visit our troop of the past.

It has been a lot of work, but also fun reliving memories that come from looking at those photos again. Many of the Scouts from that time have families of their own. I know of a couple who have boys in the Cub Scout program. Some of them are now friends of mine on Facebook. Unfortunately, I have lost touch with many of them. I know of three of them who have died since they left Scouting.

Now it is time to start working on the photos from the 1990′s, and I know there will be even more photos to scan than I had from the 1980′s. As the years went by I began taking more photos during troop activities. I would be willing to bet that the number of pictures will be between 3500 and 4000. The pictures from the 2000′s will not take as long to scan because in 2004 I switched from film to a digital camera. Of course, with the digital camera I began to take 3 to 4 times as many pictures.

If you would like to see the pictures from the 1980′s that I have posted to Flickr go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevejb68/sets/

100 Days of Scouting: Day #68.

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The Reading Merit Badge was introduced to the Boy Scouts of America advancement program in 1925. Boys already had plenty of reading material at that time, including books about fictional Boy Scouts named Tom Slade, Roy Bakely, and Pee-Wee Harris.

I own five of the original Pee-Wee Harris novels, and they are the feature of this week’s Memorabilia Monday. A few were found in used book stores. The rest were picked up through online sites like eBay.

I am happy to be able to include these books as part of my Scouting memorabilia collection. Even though they are books about fictional characters, they give us a glimpse into what life was like in the early 1900′s, nearly one hundred years ago. It was a world without video games, cell phones, the internet, and television. Boys made their own adventures instead of buying a pre-made one in a store.

The Pee-Wee Harris books are now in the public domain. Many of them are available as free electronic versions through sites like Amazon, Google Books, and Project Gutenburg. Download them for your iPad, Kindle, or Nook. I have already downloaded them even though I still need a device on which to read them. Until then, I will read them the “old school” way, through the printed hardback versions.

100 Days of Scouting: Day 42.

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It’s Monday! The start of another workweek. The day of blogging about Scouting Memorabilia. This time I go back to the 1940′s and the Boy Scout of America handbook. I have been lucky enough to add two of these to my book collection. Both were used by boys when they were a Scout so they do show some wear. To tell the truth, these books are in better shape than some of the current handbooks that boys in my troop use.

Most of this handbook is black and white, but the first dozen pages were done in color. There are several pages of advertising in the back of the book, along with the front and back cover. There are large sections devoted to trees, birds, and weather. There is even a list of United States of America presidents, up to F. D. Roosevelt. The books contains quite a few black and white drawings. It also seems to contain a lot more information than today’s handbook. (Maybe boys read more back then?)

Have you been lucky enough to find a 1940′s Handbook for your collection?

100 Days of Scouting: Day 35.

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I collect Boy Scout handbooks. I started collecting them shortly after I became a scoutmaster. I would check out any used bookstores that I would come across to find any Scouting themed books; handbooks, history books about Scouting, fictional novels. I have a decent collection. I have noticed that books in the used bookstores have gone up in price, dramatically at times, so I would guess that more people have been collecting them also. The last few books I added to my shelves have come from eBay.

The oldest Boy Scout Handbooks in my collection are from 1932. I was lucky enough to find two of them over the years. Both are in pretty good condition. Both have writing in them from the boys who once used the books. It is fun to look through them and see how Scouting has changed over the years, especially the advancement program. It is also interesting to how the Scouting program has not changed. Outdoor program, character building, and values are still an important part of the program. The more things change, the more the stay the same.

Do you collect handbooks? What is the oldest one in your collection?

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